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I have a friend named John, and John tends to exaggerate. Trying to illustrate this hyperbole habit one day, another friend of mine said “John could see a 6-foot-9 guy walking down the street and think he saw the tallest man in the world.”

Funny thing is, in sports, we all have a little John in us. The last play is always the best play, the current champion always the greatest.

So when the San Diego State football team went up to Boise State Saturday and bucked the 19th-ranked Broncos 21-19, some might have argued that it was the biggest win in program history. But now that a few days have passed, and some perspective has squeezed its way in, it’s safe to say that such an opinion…

Is absolutely correct.

Of the 499 football games the Aztecs have won, none was bigger than that bombshell in Boise. In the 91 years of the program’s existence, never has 0:00 looked so sublime.

The significance stems from a combo of opponent-quality, how that opponent plays at home, what was at stake, what’s on the horizon for each team, and some triple-your-heart-rate drama. In other words: who, what, where, when, and wow.

“This team will always have the ability to brag about that,” said SDSU coach Rocky Long, when asked about being part of the first Aztec football team to beat a top-25 team on the road. “Even when you’re around a team that does exceptional things, it’s always ‘oh, well, in the last 15 years.’ But guess what? This one’s never been done before, so the members of this team will be able to carry that forever.”

So yes, this game unquestionably tops the list of SDSU victories outside of the 619. But anyone from the 1977 Aztecs team reading this column likely wants to play kickball with my cranium.

Not only did that squad beat No. 13 Florida State at Qualcomm, it won by 25 points and led 38-10 at halftime. If this year’s Aztecs won in a photo finish over Boise, the ’77 team was like Usain Bolt outsprinting a shot-putter.

Still, can we put a non-conference victory atop the totem pole of great wins? Can we discount the fact that Boise State was 77-1 at home before Saturday? And like a 12-round thriller vs. a first-round knockout, doesn’t the close score only heighten the prestige?

Well, there is one man, Tom Ables, who attended both games. And this should surprise nobody who knows Ables, as he has attended more than 700 SDSU football games in his lifetime.

But the 86-year-old contends the Florida State’s motivation stayed back in Tallahassee on the day it played the Aztecs, and that the program’s seminal moment did not involve the Seminoles.

“I think Florida State just thought they were going to come down here and have a nice warm-up game before Florida,” said Ables, adding that the Seminoles already knew what bowl game they’d be playing in when they came to San Diego. “To me, the biggest win is a combination of the Nevada game (earlier this season) and that Boise State game.”

“Star Wars” was great, but it’s no “Empire Strikes Back.” And while that overtime win over Nevada sent that the Aztecs into euphoria last month, its true role was setting up the exclamation point three weeks later against Boise State.

Now, San Diego State is tied for first place in the Mountain West. Now, as they head into the Big East next year, the Aztecs have shown they are hardly an unofficial bye week.

Now, the venerated SDSU basketball team will have some company on the front page this weekend.

Before last week, Long didn’t want to talk about what a win over the Broncos would do for the program. Turns out he didn’t need to.